Guess Who Really Pays the Taxes

Yes, income in America is skewed toward the rich. But taxes are skewed far, far more. The top 5 percent pay well over half the income taxes. STEPHEN MOORE has the numbers.

1. Are income taxes fair?
 
That depends on who is offering the opinion. Democratic candidates for president certainly don’t think so. John Edwards has said, “It’s time to restore fairness to a tax code that has been driven badly out of whack.” Hillary Clinton laments that “middle-class and working families are paying a much higher percentage of their income [in taxes].” Over the past seven years, however, Americans in general think taxes have become more fair, not less. The Gallup Organization found in an April poll that 60 percent of respondents believe the income taxes that they themselves pay are fair, com­pared with 37 percent who believe the taxes they pay are unfair. In 1997, the figures were 51 percent fair and 43 percent unfair. 

2. What income group pays the most federal income taxes today?

READ MORE:  http://www.american.com/archive/2007/november-december-magazine-contents/guess-who-really-pays-the-taxes

Most News Reports Don't Tell Readers or Viewers How Little Money 'Buffett Rule' or Even Obama's Tax Hikes will Raise

A search at the Associated Press's national website on Warren Buffett's last name at about 5 p.m. ET returned two recent items which are still present there. Each item (here and here) mentions the Obama Fan of Omaha's idea to "impose a minimum tax of 30 percent on income between $1 million and $10 million, and a 35 percent rate for income above that." Neither mentions the pathetically small amount such a tax would raise while seriously impacting the ability of high income earners who own or run businesses to expand them -- or in some cases causing them to shrink.

It's the same at other establishment press outlets. Two recent New York Times items found in a search on Buffett's full name (here and here, the latter item being Buffett's own op-ed on Sunday) fail to note how little money Buffett's proposed tax hikes would raise. So how little is "little"?

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2012/11/29/most-news-reports-dont-tell-readers-or-viewers-how-little-money-buffett-#ixzz2El33D7So

What Ludwig von Mises Taught Gottfried Haberler and Paul Samuelson about Tax Loopholes

Tax loopholes are universally denounced across the political spectrum. Democrats revile them as egregious giveaways to the “rich” that should all be tightly sealed up in the interests of “revenue enhancement” for deficit reduction, infrastructure investment, propping up collapsing entitlement programs, etc. Republicans condemn them as major barriers to the implementation of a more business- and investor-friendly flat tax. Even free market economists oppose tax loopholes as inefficient and “non-neutral” to the market economy’s allocation of resources–as if there existed an optimal pattern of coercive redistribution of income from productive, private taxpayers to parasitic, political tax-consumers that was neutral to the market.
Needless to say Ludwig von Mises, who never took his eye off of the larger politico-economic issue of capitalism versus socialism, freedom versus statism, did not share the modern aversion to tax loopholes founded on baseless economistic concerns about “effiiciency” and “tax neutrality.” He pithily summarized the case in favor of tax loopholes, according to the following anecdote related by Paul Samuelson (“Tribute to Gottfried Haberler for American Enterprise Institute Memorial, 18 September 1995″) :

Some of us at sherry before a Fiscal Policy dinner in the Harvard Faculty Club were beefing about certain tax loopholes in the IRS code. Gotttfried [Haberler] whispered quietly, “Capitalism breathes through those loopholes.” The next day I told him how much I had liked his aphorism. Always the straight-arrow scholar, he said, “Yes, but the words are those of Ludwig von Mises not Gottfried Haberler.

READ MORE:  http://bastiat.mises.org/2012/11/what-ludwig-von-mises-taught-gottfried-haberler-who-taught-paul-samuelson-about-tax-loopholes/

Sticker Shock: New Car Prices Are Going Up

The news from Tesla was long expected. Less than six months after delivering the first Model S, the electric vehicles maker is raising the price of the Model S by $2,500.

The base Model S will sell for $59,900 ($52,400 after the federal tax rebate) for those ordered after January 1st. (Read More: Tesla Delivers the Model S, Will It Live Up to Expectations?)

Tesla has said for some time that it would be raising the price of its first sedan, but it's not the only automaker hiking prices.

"There's no doubt you're going to see sticker prices go up," says John Humphrey, Senior Vice President of J.D. Power. "With the content going into new cars and trucks, the costs will have to be passed along to buyers."

What kind of costs? 

The biggest change is with newer more fuel efficient engines. Automakers are required to move the average fuel economy for their fleet of vehicles to 34.1 MPG by 2016 and 54.5 MPG by 2025 (currently at 29.7 MPG). Getting there will mean major upgrades in the engines and components of vehicles.

READ MORE:  http://www.cnbc.com/id/50014208

What Empty Nest? Weak Economy Means Living at Home

You raise them, you educate them and you expect them to go out into the world. But they keep coming back.

The recession and weak recovery appears to be keeping many adult children from getting a home of their own, and that could have implications for the housing industry's recovery.

A Census Bureau report released Wednesday found that between 2007 and 2011 there was a steady increase in the percentage of adults living in someone else's house – and that increase has mostly been driven by adult children moving in with mom and dad.

In 2011, Census Bureau researchers found that 17.9 percent of people 18 and older, or 41.2 million people, lived in a house in which they weren't the head of the household or that person's spouse or significant other. That's up from 16 percent in 2007, before the nation went into recession.

Read more:  http://www.cnbc.com/id/50010517

Pending Home Sales Surge to Five Year High

Buyers are coming back to the housing market in ever greater numbers, as an industry index measuring contracts to purchase existing homes surged 5.2 percent in October from September.

The monthly gauge of pending home sales from the National Association of Realtors was also revised higher in September and is now up 13.2 percent from October of 2011. This is a forward looking indicator for closed sales one to two months from now.

"We've had very good housing affordability conditions for quite some time, but we're seeing more impact now from steady job creation and rising consumer confidence about home buying now that home prices have clearly turned positive," wrote Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the NAR in a release. (Read More: Could Housing Be the Antidote to the 'Fiscal Cliff'?)

Pending home sales are now at the highest level since March of 2007 and have risen, on a year-over-year basis, for 18 consecutive months. The activity, however, varies from region to region, and the Realtors say the Northeast, which saw a 0.1 percent drop in sales month-to-month- did see some impact from Hurricane 

Sandy.


READ MORE:  http://www.cnbc.com/id/49998877

‘Fiscal Cliff’ Could Put Millions of Taxpayers Into ‘AMT Shock’

One of the key questions lurking in the "fiscal cliff" talks — though well below the public's radar — is what happens to the alternative minimum tax, or AMT.

Diane Macdonald | Stockbyte | Getty Images

 

Implemented in 1969 to make sure upper-income Americans pay their share of taxes, the AMT has increasingly snared more middle-income Americans over the years because it was never indexed for inflation.
During the 2011 tax year for example, the AMT hit single taxpayers with incomes as low as $48,450 and joint filers making only $74,450.

But millions more Americans could be subject to the AMT in their 2012 returns if Congress fails to reach a deal on the fiscal cliff before year-end. That's because the AMT is currently scheduled to hit individuals making as little as $33,750 a year and joint filers making $45,000.

READ MORE:  http://www.cnbc.com/id/49981664